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Rose and Crown, Great Horkesley, Essex
White onion and thyme soup amuse bouche - dense flavours just right for a tiny serving.
That little episode was, I think, the longest break from blogging I've had in about six years. I read somewhere that we are due to get flu every ten years or so, and I managed to have this decade's dose while on a flight back from New York (scratch one week's blogging, while I was having fun on holiday) a couple of weeks ago. It's been exactly two weeks today (scratch another two weeks' blogging, while I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling and wishing I was dead), and I'm still not better. But at least I can look at a monitor now without splattering goo all over it and getting a blinding headache from the backlight.
So. To the Essex/Suffolk border, where about a month ago, I was invited over to the Rose and Crown in Great Horkesley (01206 271251) for a lazy Tuesday supper. Chef and patron Ed Halls set up shop in the sort of place that estate agents describe as having a "wealth of beams" almost exactly a year ago, after spells cooking at starry places like Morston Hall in Norfolk, and Pétrus under Marcus Wareing. (And, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention that I discovered half-way through my meal that my buddy Krista from Passport Delicious is a part-owner of the Rose and Crown.)
Warm salad of black pudding, smoked bacon, shallot marmalade and soft boiled quail's egg. As good as it looks!
Ed marks a very clear line in the fuzzy territory between the pub scampi-in-a-basket menu and the sort of fine dining that might intimidate your gran. This is an accessible menu that you can easily put in front of the family; but it's also full of little un-pubby gestures like a little amuse bouche – in our case, a little cup of dense and pepper-hot white onion and thyme soup – some exceptionally good olives, and ingredients like quail's eggs, shallot confit and polenta. (Lady at table next to us: "What is this poo-len-ta on the menu?" The staff are brilliant, and had her all set in no time; and yes, she ended up ordering it.)
Alongside the less pubby flourishes, you'll find all of the things you'd hope to find on a pub menu: stellar onion rings made with a beer you can get on tap at the bar; proper, twice-cooked chips; gargantuan portions of calves liver; and the thing that really drew me to the Rose and Crown in the first place: dry-aged Dedham Beef steaks, cut thick and chargrilled perfectly (in my case) medium rare. Don't be put off by the slightly George Foreman Grill-looking char marks on your steak. My bone-in ribeye really was a great-tasting piece of meat, raised properly, fed with grass, like cows should be, and cooked simply and well. (Witness the fact that I polished the whole thing off; I am almost never able to finish a whole steak.) Ribeye, especially with the bone, is far and away my favourite cut of steak, and you don't see it on menus as often as it deserves. It's tender from extensive marbling, and full of wonderfully beefy flavour: this is a muscle that gets used a lot, and the proximity to the bone adds flavour and sweetness.
Ribeye steak, with slow-roasted garlic tomatoes and watercress salad. Stellar chips and onion rings out of shot, disappearing into Dr W.
You can choose saucing for your steak from a short list, and I heartily recommend the chunk of Stilton offered as a kind of hard sauce.
The quality of the cooking shines through in little details like the breathtakingly rich fish stock making a base for the scallop risotto, and the desserts, which were shockingly good. Not at all what you might expect on a pub menu: here was an orange and passion fruit crème brulée, topped off with bitter macerated oranges and a spectacularly creamy white chocolate ice cream. Those bitter, sour oranges paired with sharp passion fruit were such a good foil to the dense, rich custard that they made my head spin. Dr W interjected that the head-spinning may have been caused by the Greene King ales we were drinking. The brewery, at Bury St Edmunds, is only 25 miles away, and there's a definite, and very positive, difference to the taste of the beer when it's not had to travel too far.
Great Horkesley is just outside Colchester, and near all of those lovely day-out places like Long Melford and Lavenham; it's also a great place to stop for lunch if you're out on your way to the Suffolk coast. It's great to see more pubs taking food seriously, and Ed is a really interesting guy to chat with; if you're in the area, it's well worth a visit.
Pecan pie with maple syrup and butterscotch ice cream. There must be a magical ice cream elf in the kitchen; all the ice creams we tried were spectacular.
Posted on 1st December 2010
Roast rib of beef with red wine gravy
Roast rib of beef, straight out of the oven
I'm blogging from my new MacBook Pro, an anniversary present from the inestimable Dr W. I'm still getting used to it; there are all kinds of PC keyboard shortcuts hard-wired into my brain that I'm having to relearn, and I don't have any photo-editing software on here yet. In short, if anything looks a bit funny in today's post, please be gentle with me – things should be better next week when I've got to grips with the various things the command button does!
Is there anybody out there who doesn't love a big chunk of well-aged, grass-fed roast beef? This joint was a present from my in-laws, who have amazing taste in gifts. It's from Lishman's butcher's in Ilkley, and had been sitting in the freezer for a few months, waiting for the weather to turn in a roasty direction.
If you're not into turkey at Christmas, a beef rib is a fantastic substitution; it's traditional but rather special, and there are very, very few Brits of a certain age out there who don't have happy childhood memories of family occasions centred around a pre-BSE joint. To my mind, it's the best of the roasting joints; the meat is rich and savoury from its proximity to the bone, and there's a perfect amount of fat for lubrication and flavour in there. As a rule of thumb, you can count on each rib in the joint being sufficient to serve two people, so it's easy to work out how large a chunk of meat to buy. I like to cook a rib nice and rare; if your uncle Bert likes his meat cooked until there's not a trace of pink, just give him a slice from one end of the joint.
The gravy I served with this is a bit special; it's intensely dense and savoury, and rich with the flavour of red wine and caramelised onion. Don't use one of those undrinkable £3 bottles marketed as cooking wine here; while I don't want you raiding the cellar for the Burgundy your Dad laid down in the 1980s, you should make this gravy with something you'd be happy to drink. If you can get hold of some real beef or veal stock made with a roasted bone, that'll be fantastic here. The gravy has so much other flavour supporting it, though, that you can happily use some decent chicken stock instead. (And your freezer is full of home-made chicken stock, right?)
I served this with a huge, rustling pile of roast potatoes and parsnips, and a shredded spring cabbage sauteed in a little butter with some peeled chestnuts; these are all great for soaking up the gorgeous gravy. To roast a rib of beef rare (add five minutes per 500g if you want it medium, and ten if, for some unaccountable reason, you want it well-done), you'll need:
A rib of beef
1 teaspoon plain flour
1 red onion
300ml good beef or chicken stock
Juices from the joint
Take the beef out of the fridge in plenty of time, so it's at room temperature when you come to cook it. Preheat the oven to a blistering 240ºC (460ºF). Pat the joint dry with kitchen paper. Mix the salt, flour and mustard in a small bowl, and use your fingers to rub the mixture all over the fatty surface of the joint.
Put the beef in a roasting dish and slide it into the oven for an initial 20 minutes, then bring the temperature down to 180ºC (360ºF) and cook the joint for 15 minutes per 500g. (See timings above for a medium or well-done roast.)
While the rib is cooking, start on the gravy. Slice the onion finely, and fry it in a little beef dripping (goose fat is good if you don't have any) until it starts to brown. Tip the balsamic vinegar into the pan and cook, stirring, until the onions start caramelising and the mixture becomes sticky.
Pour the red wine over the onions and bring to a simmer. Add the stock, bring back up to a simmer and allow the whole thing to bubble away gently with the lid on for half an hour. Remove from the heat, and strain the contents of the pan through a sieve into a jug. Discard the onions, which will have given up all their flavour, and leave the jug to one side until the beef is finished.
When the beef is ready to come out of the oven, remove it from the roasting pan to a warmed dish in a warm place to rest for 20 minutes, covered loosely with a piece of tin foil. This will give you time to finish up the vegetables and finish the gravy while the muscle fibres in the meat relax and the juices start to flow. Finish the gravy by putting the roasting pan you cooked the meat in on the hob over a medium flame. Sprinkle the flour into the pan and use a whisk to blend it well with any flavour-carrying fat from the joint. Pour a ladle of the stock from the jug into the pan and whisk away until everything is well blended, scraping at the sticky bits on the bottom. Repeat, a ladle at a time, until everything is combined, then return to a saucepan and simmer away without a lid for five minutes, stirring as you go, before tasting to adjust for salt and pepper, and transferring to a gravy boat just in time to serve up the whole roast.
Freemasons Country Inn, Wiswell, Lancashire
I'd been invited to lunch at the Freemasons Country Inn in Wiswell, Lancashire, by the fine folks from American Express and the London Restaurant Festival. This year's LRF sees chefs from ten London restaurants pair up with ten restaurants from all over the country to produce gala menus on October 10, especially for American Express card holders. (If you don't have an American Express card, get a friend who does to book for you.) There are some big names taking part – Alain Roux, Raymond Blanc, Mitch Tonks, Richard Corrigan – alongside some rising stars you're bound to be hearing much more about very soon.
Ham and eggs - pressed ham hock, crispy hen's egg, "Flavours of Piccalilli"
Wiswell is a tiny village, arranged precariously along a single-track path that curves up a dripping wet Lancashire hill. I got lost on my way there, and had to stop at a petrol station in nearby Clitheroe to ask for directions. A man wearing a fuzzy jumper in the crisp aisle knew exactly where I was meant to be going: he'd just had his wedding anniversary meal there. ("Seven courses! You'll eat like a king; it's a magnificent restaurant.") Locally, the Freemasons has developed a huge and loyal following, as evidenced by the fact that they were packed to the gills with diners on a soaking Monday lunchtime in August, traditionally one of the restaurant industry's slowest months.
Scallops - Roast scallops rubbed with tandoori spices, pork scratchings, sweet potato and apple, tandoori brown butter
I was here with Matthew Foxon from the Criterion, who has been paired up for Amex's shindig with Steven Smith, the Freemasons' chef. They met precisely two hours before I rolled up, and in that time had become such firm friends that I found myself addressing them as one chefly entity called Matt'n'Steve. They announced in unison: "This is a good pairing. We're on the same wavelength." They have lots in common besides the haircuts: a very similar approach to sourcing ingredients, to the importance of texture in a dish and to flavour combinations. Steven's team prepared lunch from the Freemasons' menu, Matt'n'Steve developed a dish for October while I watched, and I ate myself silly.
Beets and ricotta - poached and fried beets, crispy ricotta, pear jelly, sloe gin jelly, roast cob nuts, basil and radish cress
The Freemasons was not what I'd expected from a country pub. Downstairs, it's pure pub: a bar, wooden tables, stone flags, shootin'-huntin'-fishin' prints and the odd bit of taxidermy. (The upstairs houses a more formal dining area and two private dining rooms.) At a first glance, the menu looks like solid, pubby, starch-and-stodge stuff. If that's what you're after, you'll be disappointed. Steven has subverted the standard pub menu and made it a jumping-off point for some of the most elegant restaurant food I've eaten this year. These were jewel-like, complex presentations, with each beautiful element on the plate calculated to complement the whole dish. No bangers in a bun here. Sourcing is a matter of pride for this kitchen – by the end of the meal I knew the first name of the man who grows the restaurant's beets, the life history of the piglet who sacrificed himself for my superb terrine (and that of his parents), and the precise bit of Scottish coast my scallops had lived on.
Goosnargh duck, poached and roast, beetroot and orange, crispy duck wontons, Stilton, creamed cabbage
Steven draws inspiration from the best bits of English cuisine and from the local area. He's a Lancashire lad, and knows the countryside and its suppliers intimately. There's a nod to the local Asian population in the spicing of the scallops; some traditional piccalilli and pork scratchings are given a very unconventional treatment; and what looks like a walnut whip but turns out to be a light-as-air puff of caramelised meringue. A pork jelly sits on the plate with no pork pie in sight, and works as a salty, mellow foil to slivers of sweetly pickled fennel. And who knew that pear and beetroot were such a good flavour match?
Lemon meringue pie, walnut whips, salted walnut ice cream, dried autumn berries
Once service was over, I was invited to the kitchen to have a look at one of the dishes the two chefs are developing together for the LRF event. Matt was busying himself about some exquisitely delicate sheets of pasta while Steve piped a coil of leek and potato purée onto a pasta base, dropped a fresh yolk into the centre and topped the lot off with another pasta sheet to make a large piece of ravioli, which was poached briefly so the egg was barely set. Matt had brought a large and handsome truffle up on the train with him (I feel for the hungry souls who shared a carriage with him) – it made a heady sauce, drizzled around the pasta and some more leeks with another leek purée, with more of the truffle grated over the top. I've seldom seen such focussed attention as Steve gave that single raviolo – and it did them both proud. I was caught swiping at the yolky, truffly, leeky bits on my empty plate with a finger and sucking it, and was roundly laughed at; I felt somewhat less than proud, but it didn't stop me going back for more.
Leek ravioli, baby, grilled and braised leeks, truffles, roast hazelnuts
Wiswell is easy to get to from either side of the Pennines (I was coming from a weekend over the hills in Leeds; Manchester is close by, and the M6 is right on the doorstep), and this restaurant should be a must if you're in that part of the world. Book early; it's guaranteed to be packed out. (See the links at the top of this page for booking details.) If you're down south, try to get an American Express card-holding friend to grab you a table for the 10-10-10 event, where you'll be able to try several of the dishes above – but get in quickly, because tables are selling out fast.
Rhubarb sorbet
Last winter, my friend Kate and her family moved into an enormous and ancient pile of a house in one of the nearby villages. You know the sort of house: the street is named after it; it's got medieval bits, Georgian bits and Victorian bits; there are wonderful corners all over the place for the kids to play hide-and-seek in; and there's a huge, leafy garden I'd give my right arm for.
Part of Kate's garden appears to have been looked after, a century or so ago, by a kitchen gardener with a fondness for rhubarb. Rhubarb crowns grow very slowly indeed, but Kate's rhubarb patch, having been around for a good long while, is now about the size of a couple of transit vans. No one family can consume that amount of rhubarb in one year without severe intestinal upset, so a few months ago she gave me a few kilos of stalks. Since then, they've been sitting, chopped and cleaned, in the freezer, coming out occasionally to be stewed and consumed with custard. Time to ring the changes – here's a non-custardy application of rhubarb which is grown-up enough to be wheeled out at your next dinner party. There's a lovely balance of tart and sweet in this sorbet, and it's a glorious colour. You'll find it works well as an in-between-courses palate cleanser, or as a dessert. Leave any custard well alone; this stands up on its own.
To make about a pint and a half of sorbet, depending on your rhubarb's age and water content, you'll need:
1kg rhubarb
Put all the ingredients in a saucepan and simmer very gently with the lid on until all the rhubarb has collapsed into a greenish mush (about 20 minutes). Remove from the heat. Strain through a jelly bag, a fine sieve or a muslin-lined colander for several hours or overnight and let gravity do its work, without poking at the mixture – you want the juice and only the juice. You'll notice that the solid bits of rhubarb left in the jelly bag look a lot like wet hay; all the pinkness will be in your juice.
Eventually, you'll have a bowl of pink, fragrant syrup. Chill the syrup in the fridge for at least six hours.
Follow the instructions on your ice-cream maker, or pour the syrup into a freezerproof box and put straight in the freezer, removing after an hour to attack with an electric whisk to break up the ice crystals. Freeze for another thirty minutes and whisk again, then keep repeating every thirty minutes until you have something that's recognisably sorbet. This sorbet will keep in the freezer for months, but I doubt you'll be able to leave it alone for that long.
Cookery for Invalids, C Herman Senn, 1900
Regular readers of Gastronomy Domine will be aware of my vintage cookery book habit. I'm hoping to make something of a semi-regular feature of posts about some of these books; if you've an interest in food and in social history, an elderly cookery book is a goldmine. Cookery for Invalids, written in 1900 (mine is a later edition), is a book of "recipes and diet hints for the sick room", and will make you gladder than you've ever been that you live in an age of antibiotics, insulin and ubiquitous refrigeration.
Senn, born in 1862, was a chef and a prolific writer of food books, producing 49 books in his lifetime – a remarkable feat given the limited scope of the Victorian and Edwardian kitchen in England. (He had an eye for a new angle; I would love to get my hands on a copy of his Cooking in Paper Bags and Ye Art of Cookery in Ye Olden Time.) By far his most successful book was Cookery for Invalids, first published in 1900, which ran to many editions and seems to have been published at least until the 1930s. (Penicillin was finally purified and tested on humans in 1941, and, of course, many presses closed for the Second World War – I haven't seen any evidence of printings of the book in the 40s.) Senn himself practised as an early nutritionist as well as a chef, working as Examiner in Sick-Room Cookery at several London hospitals; he was also employed by the government to set up training for army, navy and prison cooks. This was a time when nurse training at the larger hospitals included short courses in what was termed Invalid Cookery, to be practised on their convalescent charges. A wealthy family would employ a children's nurse for their perfectly well offspring. While dandling, disciplining and doing a bit of mild educating, she was also expected to produce nutritious and stimulating meals for the children; training in dietetics was considered a great boon in such a nurse.
Diet was recognised as a contributing factor in illnesses like diabetes and gout, and was believed to be an efficient treatment in illnesses like neurasthenia (a disease we don't recognise any more – it was that which affected swooning ladies in the drawing room) and rheumatism. There was a vogue for nutrition, and a huge industry in patent foods like Benger's (a nourishing wheat and milk preparation); we still recognise plenty today, like Horlick's, Bovril and Lucozade.
Cookery for Invalids contains a brief explanation of the make-up of foods: protein, carbohydrates, fat, salts (what we would describe as minerals), vitamins and water; a discussion of the suitability of various styles of cooking for the sick (horrible imprecations on those preparing fried food here); a series of recipes; and a list of special diets for those suffering various named, and usually pretty horrible, illnesses. Some of this stuff is curiously modern. I was particularly surprised to see that the daily calorie intake dictated by Senn is, at 2500 kCal, exactly the same as that the NHS tells us to keep today in 2010 – although admittedly, Senn's patient doing "hard work", when a lot of what is done today with machinery was still done by people, was allowed to increase his daily intake to between 4000 and 9000 kCal. Writing a good 70 years before Dr "Fatty Fatkins" Atkins, Senn suggested that carbohydrates were the most important part of the diet to cut out in slimmers. His approach to the sick is compassionate, kind, and non-patronising; the pretty tray on the book cover (above) is illustrative of his insistence throughout the book that food should "please the eye as well as the palate"; lack of appetite is a hurdle in most of the illnesses being treated. "The patient's wants should be studied, and their wishes gratified as far as possible…in feeding a patient do it gently and neatly." Cleanliness is paramount. NHS hospitals could learn a thing or two.
The Edwardian invalid's lot was not, all that said, a happy one. While the awful drinks made from burned toast soaked in warm water that you see in the sickroom sections of Victorian cookery books don't get a look-in here, the Edwardian convalescent was still expected to be bibbing heartily at mug upon mug of beef tea; it was thought to be easy to digest and full of delicious nourishment while "preventing the digestive organs from doing undue work". As such, Senn recommended it for all patients.
The method is shudder-inducing. The nurse would shred a chunk of lean beef with a couple of forks, discarding gristle and fat, and soak the resulting beef tartare in a big jar of cold water for an hour or so before straining the resulting mush through muslin "with a tiny pinch of salt added". Lucky invalids might have their beef tea warmed through. "Beef tea must never boil. If it approaches boiling point it is spoilt." There are eight recipes for beef tea (slow method, raw method, quick process, iced, jellied and so on) here. Variety may not be the spice of life after all. Spice, in fact, was out of the question – far too stimulating. "Stimulants are in many cases positively harmful…spices should be avoided, and where pepper is allowed it must be used sparingly." Wine, however, might be allowed with the doctor's permission; "it often tempts the appetite…when other and more solid food would fail".
Gruel recipes - click to embiggen
Gruels were easy to digest, and this archetypical invalid dish is given its own section. Click on the picture to enlarge this page of gruel recipes to a readable size – besides what you can see here, there are several more pages of gruels, one of which has a wine-glass of sherry poured into it. Thoughts of Oliver Twist aside, sherry gruel sounds abominable. When you're done with your gruel, "A raw egg beaten up and mixed with a cup of milk, tea or coffee, makes an excellent and nourishing drink." I shall refrain from comment.
It's not all so bad. There are palatable and light fish and chicken preparations, a nice little quail on toast, and a herby poached rabbit in Bechamel; unfortunately, there's also a sandwich filled with raw mutton and sugar, and a custard made with Marmite. I can imagine the patients of owners of this book conniving to die early just to get away from the cooking.
Diet for consumptives - click to enlarge
So far, so frivolous. But all your sniggering postmodernity counts for nothing once you get to the final part of the book, which discusses specific illnesses. By the time Senn was writing, the control of type II diabetes through diet (as we do today) was well understood. His diabetic menu would stand up to scrutiny today; and saccharine, discovered in 1878 and commercialised very shortly afterwards, was a real blessing for the Edwardian diabetic. The diet for gout is also similar to what a doctor might suggest today, and the "reducing" diet for the obese is dull but looks effective. But what we will understand as the futility of trying to cure tuberculosis in the pre-antibiotic period through diet, fresh air and rest, is heartbreaking. The week's menu for the consumptive here on the right (again, click to enlarge) is, as long as you were able to stomach calves' brains three times a week, pretty palatable, but entirely useless for curing the patient. The massive weight loss that was one of the outward signs of the disease is all the diet tries to address; an earlier page on TB clings to the ancient superstition that red fluids like wine were good for replacing the blood coughed up, along with minced raw meat.
I'll leave you with some of the advertisements from the front and back of the book – judging by the prices on the products and the graphical style of these ads, I think this edition is from the 1930s. You may recognise some of the products here – you can still buy Shippam's meat and fish pastes (I used to love the fish paste in my school sandwiches), Borwick's baking powder and McDougall's flour. God only knows what became of the Stuffo stuffing company, and you won't see isinglass outside the brewing process these days; it would have added a distinctly fishy tinge to your jellies, but was much cheaper than gelatine.
An earlier edition of the book (there are very few differences – the most notable one is probably the substitution of the word "corpulency" in the older text with "obesity" in the one I own) has been digitised and can be read online here. If you decide to try any of the recipes from the book, do drop me an email or leave a comment – especially if you tried any of them out on ill people. I'll be interested to hear whether they ever recovered.
Posted on 23rd June 2010
Summer terraces on the Thames
Terrace Cafe, Royal Horseguards
I found myself invited to two very different terraces on the Thames Embankment yesterday. The Royal Horseguards Hotel, near Hungerford Bridge, is offering a Wimbledon-themed afternoon tea for the whole of this year's Wimbledon fortnight – just the ticket for those of us who don't like tennis, but who do like patisseries. And just off Waterloo bridge, a few hundred yards upstream, the terrace at Somerset House has been transformed for the summer into an open-air restaurant fronted by Tom Aikens, with a spectacular bar and summer-casual menu.
The Royal Horseguards is one of those super-swanky, highly polished, five-star hotels, all harpists in the lobby and marble floors. Doormen and concierges line the halls, and a customer visiting for tea is treated with as much care as one staying in one of the most expensive suites. We were there to visit the very pretty terrace café, shaded by a line of plane trees along Victoria Embankment.
The Wimbledon tea is only running for a couple of weeks, so you'll have to get in there quickly – and then you can sit back and be spoiled for an hour or so while you work your way through a very generous and gorgeously presented high tea. Proceedings open with a strawberry and grenadine Bellini, to glug your way through while you listen to Big Ben clanging away in the background before a big silver pot of tea arrives.
Teatime treats
We were served (underarm) a long glass tray packed with pretty little patisseries, two glasses of a strawberry and Pimms consommé and a bucket of white chocolate truffles masquerading as tiny tennis balls – totally charming, tooth-hurtingly rich, and utterly addictive. Joanne Todd, the hotel's new pastry chef, is behind this very frivolous and very romantic (seriously – take someone you want to impress, because those tennis balls alone will work wonders) outing; she's only been at the hotel for a couple of weeks, and if this tea is anything to go by, there will be other good things in the Terrace Café's future. The little cupcake with the logo was delicately scented with elderflower; that's a perfectly squishy strawberry macaroon with a perfumed rose ganache hiding behind it, and a strawberry vacherin. The little truffles come with three fillings: champagne, strawberry and a fresh, creamy mint that I could have kept eating all afternoon.
Tennis ball truffles
It's just as well I didn't, because a tray of scones came out next, two plain and two with fruit and spices – along with a ball of clotted cream so enormous you could have played tennis with it. The Terrace Café runs non-Wimbledon afternoon tea for the rest of the year, from £28 for the Champagne tea (finger sandwiches, pastries, a cream tea and all that good stuff) down to £13.50 for the Westminster Tea, a straightforward cream tea. It's well worth a visit if you're having a day out. I spotted one of the new intake of MPs and an actress I shall not name because she was obviously trying to have a private moment (not with the MP) while I was scarfing my scones. If you don't have a date to take, head on over with your Mum to impress her with the crowd you mingle with.
Tom's Terrace
I barely had time to get started on digesting tea before heading over to Somerset House to meet Tom Aikens and sit down for a meal at Tom's Terrace, a pop-up restaurant overlooking the river. Tom's Terrace opened at the end of April and will only operate for 22 weeks over the summer, closing in September – it's packed out every evening, so you'll need to book ahead. I hate to get all Enid Blyton, but food really does taste better outdoors, and Tom's Terrace has been designed to make the most of the unpredictable English summer, with architectural covers over the tables, sculptural heaters (not used on the night I visited, when the weather was positively balmy) and coloured lights punctuating the restaurant.
Coronation crab salad
The menu is short, outdoorsy, unpretentious and simple, full of good ingredients prepared well. There are beautifully selected charcuteries; a whole clutch of summery salads; grilled chicken; a burger cooked to a perfect medium-rare. (You can see the whole menu on the restaurant's web site.) There are fat, truffle/parmesan chips, parboiled then fried twice to a shattering crisp outside, with fluffy middles. The coronation crab salad pictured here was sweet, fresh, and perfectly balanced – a dense, marie-rose-type sauce lifted with a very subtle dose of curry spicing, diced mango and toasted almonds had me swiping the inside of the empty glass bowl with my fingertips and sucking them. To top everything off, you'll find a really interesting range of cocktails (and a short but well thought out wine list), which you can enjoy either at the table or at the bar area at the other end of the restaurant. It's refreshing to find a bar that pays as much attention to non-alcoholic cocktails as it does to the boozy ones; ultimately, I couldn't work out whether I enjoyed Tom's Tequila or the virgin blueberry cocktail, made with floral syrups and fresh juices, more.
Chicken liver and foie gras parfait
This is great summer's evening stuff, pre- or post-theatre, or for sharing with friends. The staff are great – our table found itself sparking off competition between two bartenders over who could produce the best drink, and the service staff will bend over backwards to explain the menu and make suggestions if you get stuck. I could have stayed for hours longer, bibbing blueberries and ordering more mango rice pudding; I left at 10.30 to get my train with the greatest reluctance.
Many thanks to both restaurants for the invitations, and here's to a great summer.
Riverford Farm
Veg display in the Farm Kitchen - this is representative of what was in my delivery box this morning.
A couple of weeks ago, I rattled down to Riverford Farm in Devon in a very drinky minibus full of bloggers. Riverford is celebrated not only for their organic vegetables and meat (you may well know somebody who gets weekly vegetable boxes from them), but also for the Field Kitchen, an outstanding restaurant using products raised on the farm, that sits next to a few acres of rhubarb and plum fields.
For once, I'm going to be brief on the restaurant part of the visit. You may well have read any of a number of glowing reviews of the Field Kitchen, and its reputation is well-deserved. We ate like kings from the farm's own produce – tapas-style starters including a wild garlic tortilla, some simply gorgeous bresaola, a beet salad, and a house-cured gravadlax. The farm's lamb made an appearance in the main course in two presentations, pressed and roasted, alongside sweet purple-sprouting broccoli in an anchovy butter, and spring greens. Five desserts, of the proper English sort – all sticky toffee pud, rhubarb meringue and that sort of squashy nursery goodness.
Guy Watson
So the restaurant is marvellous. If you're in the area (Riverford is just outside Totnes), book a table and make an evening of it – I defy you not to love its honest, clean presentation of perfectly fresh produce. But what I really want to talk about here for a bit is the operation of the farm itself.
We were lucky enough to be invited to tour Riverford with Guy Watson, the farm's founder. He's a fabulous cross between a gimlet-eyed businessman in orange Converse and the sort of straw-haired, welly-wearing, salt-of-the-earth type I remember from the farms that surrounded my grandparents' little bit of land in Lincolnshire in the 70s; Guy was in this organic stuff well before it was a twinkle in anybody else's eye, and his passion for this way of growing and eating is palpable. He's been successful. The business has expanded so far that one farm alone is unable to meet the volume requirements of all those boxes, so a co-operative sort of arrangement is set up with organic farmers all over the country. Riverford itself remains very much the base of operations, though, and the box that arrived on my doorstep from them this morning included produce from here in East Anglia (celery around here is famously good, and there's a handsome bunch in there which came from Yaxley, near Peterborough, with leeks, a kohl rabi, onions, carrots and some lovely muddy potatoes), alongside little bits and pieces from other farms; I recognised the mixed salad and purple sprouting broccoli from stuff I'd seen growing in the fields in Devon, and the bag of wild garlic leaves is Devon all the way down to its pungent bottom. There are mushrooms, a cucumber and tomatoes too – the large box is enough for four people for a week, but veg enthusiasts (I'm one of them) will find that two people can easily make their way through a box in that time.
Narrow lanes, ancient Land Rover
Piled into the back of Guy's rickety Land Rover, which, like Proust's Madeleines, took me right back to my childhood and days with my Grandad (although unlike Proust, what I was smelling was wet dog and whatever it is they stuff the seats of Land Rovers with), we took a trip up to the edge of Dartmoor to survey some of the fields, stopping briefly at Guy's house to pick up some preserved artichokes he'd made last year to snack on.
The long winter this year means that some spring vegetables are arriving late this year, but it also means that there have been some bumper crops of certain produce. Purple-sprouting broccoli, which I love for its sweet stems and the tips' ability to soak up any sauce you might choose to use it with, was going like crazy when we visited, and we picked our own straight from the fields and ate it raw, sugar-sweet and with a dark brassica bite. (Guy is less keen – he says that to his mind, purple-sprouting has an air of farts about it even before you eat it.)
Purple-sprouting broccoli
Purple-sprouting broccoli is one of several crops that has to be picked by hand. The word "organic" brings ideas of primitive farming methods to mind, but nothing could be further from the truth at Riverford. Where possible, crops are brought in quickly by machine, which gets them into the cooling rooms fast, keeping them as fresh as possible. Fleece is spread out to keep seedlings safe from frost; polytunnels are used for tender leaves like the bitter, coppery dandelions that make part of the mixed salad. The difference from conventional farming lies in the enrichment of the soil, which is done with old-fashioned crop rotation, tonnes and tonnes of well-rotted manure, and "green manure"; crops like rye grass which are grown specifically in order to be ploughed straight back into the soil again. No pesticides are used, which means that hedgerows around the farm look the way hedgerows are meant to, dense with primroses and violets. The farm has experimented with biodegradable soap sprays against aphids and other pests, but found that predators are also killed by the soap; the best results against pests were achieved, says Guy, by leaving nature to achieve its own balance and encouraging predatory insects. And it's true – I spotted very few pests on our farm tour.
Wild garlic wood
We pulled leeks out of the soil to take home in the minibus, and picked plenty of rhubarb (one of my favourites). But best of all was the little ash wood at the top of a steep hill, where a huge crop of wild garlic had been seeded. It's been an enormous success in the box scheme (Riverford recommend it in omelettes and risottos – I have a recipe here on Gastronomy Domine for a pancetta and wild garlic-wrapped chicken dish), and several other woods have also been seeded for a massive crop.
We were lucky with the weather, volcanic haze aside, but for my tastes, the wooded hills, the flowers growing in the fields alongside the farm produce all untouched by herbicides, the smell of garlic wafting in the air, and the views across the tops of the fruit trees over Dartmoor are about as close to Eden in April as England gets. More power to Riverford's elbow. This is how as much of our food as possible should be produced, and I'm delighted I got a chance to see the farm in action.
Bob Bob Ricard, Soho, London
I'd been invited to Bob Bob Ricard (1 James St, Soho W1F 9DF – see the restaurant link for menus, phone and email reservations) to try a new cocktail: an English 75 with an Earl Grey syrup. What was meant to be a quick sip at the bar turned into a lengthy series of vodka shots in tiny, iced crystal glasses; a selection of really interesting cocktails; and several jewel-like little plates of Russian appetisers, the better to set off the drinks. Leonid "Bob" Shutov, one of the two owners (Richard Howarth is the "Ricard" part of the equation), spent an hour or so leading Douglas and me through the menu, structured around English club food with the odd injection of Russian standards; around the restaurant, outrageously lovely in a sort of Trans-Siberian-Express meets Japanese lacquer box way; and through the cocktail menu and extravagantly stocked wine cellar.
I'm not usually much swayed by good interior design in a restaurant, being approximately 95% motivated by food even when I'm not eating, but the attention to detail and quirky beauty of BBR's dining room is so good that it acts as a seasoning. I mentioned to Leonid that I seriously, seriously coveted the wallpaper panelling the room, all midnight blue flowers and tiny flocks of sparrows sweeping in gorgeous waves across the walls. "It's Japanese bookbinding papers. We had to do it four times before it was right; the pieces the paper is supplied in are this big." (Uses hands to demonstrate a disquietingly small rectangle.) I spent the rest of my visit staring, but I couldn't see any joins anywhere.
Downstairs bar
You'll find a gold "press for champagne" button at each Pullman-booth dining table, marble panelling feathered with veining so sumptuous that I thought it had been painted on, bronze lap dogs to guard your umbrella, magnificent deco lighting, marquetry floors and handsome brass fittings. As it turns out, the restaurant was designed by David Collins (the Wolseley, Claridge's bar, all that good stuff). It's highly individual, and such a beautiful space that I decided I needed a spot more exposure to it. I finished my surprise lunch and immediately booked a table for later in the week – BBR was so interesting that I was very keen to see what the evening service was like, and how things go when you're not there as a guest of the owner. (In brief, things go very well indeed – it's a wonderfully romantic spot for an evening meal, and the quality of what was on our plates didn't waver.)
Before you launch on anything else, you'll need to make a cocktail/wine decision. Cocktails are superb and enjoyably imaginative (I ended up going the cocktail route with Dr W, so more on those later), but BBR's wine cellar and markup policy are something rather special. The restaurant has a cellar to suit the wine tastes of any business tsar (sorry) you bring for dinner, but marks itself out by never charging more than £50 markup on any bottle of reserve wine. This curious bit of policy means that where you'd spend £923 on a bottle of 1999 Bollinger Vieilles Vignes at somewhere like Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, that very same bottle at BBR will rock up at a positively reasonable-sounding £294. A 1986 Chateau Leoville Las Cases is £338 here (£905 at le Coq d'Argent) and, for dessert, a 2002 Chateau d'Yquem that costs £310 at Ducasse at the Dorchester is less than a third as expensive, at £96. This is still a bit too rich for my blood, but for a very special occasion, I can see myself jumping on a bottle of 03 Sassicaia Tenuta San Guido at £129 – especially given that you can't actually find the wine anywhere else in the UK. BBR bought up the whole stock from that year.
Happily, there's plenty available for less hair-raising prices, and plenty on offer by the glass too.
Keta on quails' eggs
James Walker, ex of le Pont de la Tour, is in the kitchen doing all kinds of thrilling things with quail eggs and caviar. The menu here is a funny amalgam of Edwardian nursery/chophouse and Russian swank, and I loved it. The rich, salty, oily Russian starters on the menu (denoted with a little Russian flag beside each item) are the perfect foil to the gloriously austere Kauffman collection vodka or the slightly fiercer Russian Standard Imperial – drunk before a mouthful of yolky quail's egg topped with keta (Russian salmon roe), a bite of cured herring, a darkly salted cucumber or a fork's tip draped with a silky, beautifully fresh quail eggs mayonnaise. These little shots, clinked together in shimmering little crystal glasses straight from the freezer over some unashamedly pretty food, turn out to be a perfectly joyous way to start an evening out, and a great sharing experience with friends. And the prices on these lovely little bites (you might look to share four as a starter between two people) are very encouraging – the keta with quails' eggs was £4.50, the herring £3.50.
Jellied oxtongue with creamed horseradish
At a Russian friend's wedding a few years ago, we ate a braised beef brisket, cooked for hours and shredded, then suspended in a disc of aspic. A delicious thing, a bit like the inside of a very jellied pork pie without the crust. Most of the wedding guests at our table were squeamish British sorts, and Dr W and I found ourselves the only people at the table to finish the dish and then to steal it off everyone else's plates. I've not seen the same preparation since (despite some concerted effort at eating Russian in Helsinki), until lo – BBR has a version as good as anybody's aspic fantasies. Here, the meat used is shredded tongue, and the little roundel of aspic is packed with sweet, fresh peas, slivers of carrot cut into fanciful shapes with an aspic cutter, threads of cress, and more dense, beefy flavour than you'd believe you could fit into such a small space. (There is also a quail's egg in there, of course.) A little timbale of a sweet and mild Russian horseradish is a beautiful foil to what turns out to be a weirdly delicate, literally mouth-melting plate.
Although wild Beluga is available, most of what's on offer caviar-wise is the farmed roe from Aquitaine. I'm a huge enthusiast for farmed caviar; it's a reliable product and it's helping to democratise the price of a very special ingredient. The nutty, pearly roe is served with blinis, or as part of an Eggs Royale – an Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon on the muffin instead of ham, a gout of really good hollandaise, a plump poached egg…and a giant dollop of caviar. It's the first time I've come across caviar treated as a condiment, and thinking about the dish is still making my mouth water nearly two weeks later.
The cocktail list is enormously good fun. A rhubarb gin and tonic (the restaurant's signature cocktail, now available year-round), made with a poached rhubarb syrup and one of the pinkest, prettiest drinks I've had in ages, uses a gin without too much in the way of botanicals to let the floral, rosy headiness of the rhubarb sing. There's a clear Bloody Mary, made with the clear juices of fresh tomatoes, extracted overnight. It's a drink that packs a glorious vine scent and a real hit of umami on the tongue. There's intense tomato flavour with no redness – it's positively discombobulating. You're given a little bottle of Tabasco and some Worcestershire sauce to spice your own drink with, so the beautiful clarity of the drink isn't spoiled before you've had a good chance to play with it for a bit.
Pork cheek was poached in a dense, rich jus full of star anise and tomato. Glossy and malevolently dark, it's served with some very fine Yukon Gold mash. And I went for the evening's special, a rose veal Rossini, which came in at a positively bargainsome £24.50, giving me a great excuse to order another cocktail. I've always liked veal better than beef in a Rossini; the more delicate flavour of the meat works better, for me, against the strong flavours of foie and truffles in the dish, and this was cooked to a lovely pinkness, moist and tender to the tooth. My little lobe of foie was seared glass-crisp on the outsides, melting velvety-smooth inside. And the truffly, oily, garlicky smear of duck pate on the crouton that sat on the side of the plate was so good that Dr W, having been offered a bite, made a noise I haven't ever heard before.
The plate of cakes we asked for for dessert was a bit dry, and each of the six little bites was really rather ordinary. I was so full I didn't really care, though – and an Affogato coffee was exactly the sort of alternative I was after, the ice cream shot through with vanilla seeds.
You can go to BBR and spend your entire inheritance in one night, if you try. You can also go and, with some judicious ordering, come away with a wallet not particularly lightened. Head along at night, when the restaurant positively twinkles, explore the more curious corners of the menu, and tell them I sent you.


With increasing emphasis towards internet security, it is only fitting that we spend more time looking at the available VPN offers available to which this IAPS VPN review belongs. Let's face it: the chances of being attacked maliciously, not to mention the ever increasing threat against personal privacy rights, are requiring an ever more deliberate and stringent response of which the use of personal VPN is perhaps the most convenient.
In this IAPS VPN review, we preview one of the most famed options available on offer today: IAPS Security Service VPN. In this IAPS review, we will look at some of the more important considerations that can help set IAPS apart from other services.
Perhaps the widest geographic reach out of any personal VPN service on offer. IAPS has servers located in more than 150 countries worldwide reaching exotic locations like Zimbabwe, Kuwait, Colombia, and Vietnam to name a few.
Supports multiple device types for the ultimate in customer convenience; IAPS supports the iPod, iPad and iPhone, DD-WRT wireless routers, Android phones, Blackberry phones, and even Xbox360 gaming consoles.
Unlimited and metered VPN plans available to give clients options to configure their specific services based on their needs.
No P2P restrictions for all clients in all locations.
Online support ticketing system ensures speedy turnaround of customer service tech support. Technical service support reachable through various media like Twitter, Skype, Email, and Live Chat options among others.
As with any personal VPN service, a big factor in the strength of the brand lies in the number of VPN protocols that is supported by default combined with the extent of service provided as indicated by the number of servers and corresponding locations for those servers.
In these aspects, IAPS more than passes the test. It offers one of the most extensive VPN protocol selections on the market. OpenVPN, PPTP, L2TP and SSTP protocols are standard with IAPS. Still, any other IAPS VPN review would tell you that these are useless without support for critical OS and device types and IAPS delivers in this regard as well. We've already mentioned how IAPS is compatible with most all Apple devices, Blackberry and Android phones, DD-WRT wireless routers, and even your Xbox360 gaming console. This is made possible by easy-to-install configurations that seamlessly work with operating systems like Mac OS, Windows, and Linux among others.
IAPS is also just one of a few personal VPN brands with server locations in countries that are not typically supported by your standard VPN service. Where the typical VPN brand would have servers covering North America, Europe and Asia, this IAPS review would tell you that countries in North Africa, the Middle East and even the Baltic States are adequately covered by reliable servers.
Lastly, where the typical IAPS VPN review would stop with the obvious technical advantages of the IAPS package, we extend it further to customer convenience. This is another key area where IAPS sets itself apart; there are various pricing plans that are configured to specific user specifications. A 12-month offer exclusively for UK VPN services costs $65.97 in total. US customers with multi-protocol support and unlimited server access costs a reasonable $109.99 for 12 months.
In terms of pure muscle power, the verdict is unanimous and extends beyond this IAPS review to include many of the other IAPS VPN review posts on the internet: IAPS offers a wider service with more options for flexibility. Feedback via most other IAPS VPN review backs IAPS' excellent reputation when it comes to speed and service reliability. And with an above average customer service infrastructure with lighting-speed response times, there is plenty to love and like with IAPS personal VPN.
There is no doubt that IAPS VPN is one of the best VPN providers out there and more so if you are inside the United Kingdom where package prices are lower than if you were in the United States. No doubt – as this IAPS VPN review suggests – that you will enjoy greater access to your favorite websites, at no extra cost, and with a big leeway for convenience when you choose IAPS VPN. So choose the largest network with the most to offer at the most competitive price and it will forever transform the way you use the internet.


This summer, Courtney Jane Miller Landscape Architecture will host a summer series curated by Patrick Melroy. A different local female artist will take over the studio each month for a solo show on the theme "Drought Resistant." The series kicks off with a reception on June 4 celebrating the first month's artist, Cathy Ellis. The work of Megan Mueller and Jenalee Harmon will round out the series in July and August, respectively.


Very friendly & efficient, appreciate the service call!
James Goodman, thank you for choosing Precision Door Service, and taking the time to share feedback on your experience.
Read review and seemed like a good company to take a chance on. Technician that serviced my needs was wonderful and did a perfect job. I would highly recommend for any repair,I will use your company for all my needs in the future.
Scott White, thank you for the review, and we appreciate the recommendation!
Have used before. Great job. Fast and efficient.
David Richards, we are glad to hear from you. Thank you for taking the time to write a review. We are pleased to know your Precision Door Service experience was a positive one.
James was very courteous and professional. I called at around 8am on a Saturday and he arrived within 2 hours. Awesome customer service! I recommend Precision to everyone!
Greg Henry, thank you for the review, and we appreciate the recommendation!
Thank you for a wonderful experience. Alex was wonderful!!!
Keith Weeks, thank you for taking the time to write a review and share your feedback. We are glad to know you are pleased with Alex.
Great service. Very professional and even though they didn't have the parts to fix my garage door, they showed me what I needed and instructed me on how to replace it once I ordered it. Price for the service call was a bit steep, but I knew that going into it.
Josh S, thank you for choosing Precision Door Service, and taking the time to share feedback on your experience.
Dawn, we are glad to hear from you. Thank you for taking the time to write a review. We are pleased to know your Precision Door Service experience was a positive one.
Service was good. Only negative is it will take a week to get replacement parts. I can drive there quicker than this is going to take.
Jim Thomas, thank you for choosing Precision Door Service, and taking the time to share feedback on your experience.
Rollers, repairs, new motor & remotes, keypad, etc. Serviceman gave excellent service, very friendly and efficient. Even programmed smartphone to open and close garage door remotely.
Dennis Maddan, we are glad to hear from you. Thank you for taking the time to write a review. We are pleased to know your Precision Door Service experience was a positive one.
5 Star On time, very professional. I would definitely recommend!
Roger Griffin, thank you for the review, and we appreciate the recommendation!


The buzz were real, as The Head of Microsoft Game Studios, Matt Booty, declared inXile Entertainment and Obsidian Entertainment are verging in the first party register. Seeing the previous obtainment exposed at E3 2018, the numbers of roll now is about twelve to thirteen studios counted in Microsoft Global Publishing.
The released records of inXile Entertainment has done are The Bard's Tale IV, Wasteland 2 and Torments, as well as the Oculus Rift exclusive VR spin-off The Mage's Tale(which released in 2017).
The exciting part is, several contrivers presently work in one of these two companies have are under the reverend Black Isle banner. Nevertheless, The Head of Microsoft Game Studios, Matt Booty, declared that they will stay individual and self-sufficient from a creative angle, and would rather to functioning their own blueprint.


There is a block of rooms at the Hilton Milwaukee Downtown - a short walk to the Delta Center and to the Hyatt via skywalks - reserved for our conference attendees for July 7 - July 9. Attendees of the conference must book their hotel room through the conference website in order to receive discounted rates starting at $149.00 per night plus taxes.
The Hilton Milwaukee Downtown hotel is a classic art deco hotel with rich furnishing and distinctive architecture built in 1927. Originally called The Schroeder Hotel, today the Hilton Milwaukee Downtown is recognized as the city's largest hotel with a tradition of excellence spanning nearly 85 years. The gracious style of the hotel is reflected in impeccable service and attention to every detail provided by a tenured team of hospitality professionals. We are proud to say we are a AAA Four Diamond hotel.
Combining 1920's grandeur and elegance with today's modern conveniences, the Hilton Milwaukee Downtown is the premier choice of business travelers, families, corporate events, galas and weddings. The hotel features 729 newly renovated guest rooms and over 30,000 square feet of meeting space, including the 8,800 square foot ornate Crystal Ballroom, and the regal Empire Ballroom. The hotel is located among the downtown Milwaukee hotels on Wisconsin Avenue, the main thoroughfare of downtown living, and is connected to the city's convention center, The Wisconsin Center.
If you prefer to call in to make reservations, you can call 1-888-481-1442. Be sure to mention the "Sloan Consortium" when making your reservation in order to get the group rate.
Connected to the Delta Center and just steps from the Bradley Center and Entertainment District, Hyatt Regency Milwaukee is newly renovated and waiting to serve its guests with even greater comfort and luxury here in the heart of downtown Milwaukee.
Accommodations cut no corners, offering wireless high speed Internet access, rich furnishings and a unique video checkout and message system to streamline your travel plans. The brand new Bistro 333 and Bar 333 combine with the delicious take-away specials in Sarah's Pantry to satisfy your culinary desires, whether you are looking for a refreshing cocktail or a peaceful dinner after a long day. The complimentary 24-hour Hyatt Stay Fit®Center will help you maintain your fitness regimen, while the Potowatomi Bingo Casino holds endless diversions for your group.
Attendees of the conference must book their hotel room through the conference website no later than Friday, June 21, 2013 in order to receive discounted rates starting at $149.00 per night plus taxes. The special conference rates also apply for three days prior to and three days after the conclusion of the conference.


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Rheumatoid Arthritis-Interstitial Lung Disease in the United States: Prevalence, Incidence, and Healthcare Costs and Mortality
The Journal of Rheumatology February 2019, 46 (2) 218; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3899/jrheum.171315.C1
Rheumatoid Arthritis–Interstitial Lung Disease in the United States: Prevalence, Incidence, and Healthcare Costs and Mortality*
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For half a century, the federal government has required any urban area in the United States with a population of 50,000 or more to establish a Metropolitan Planning Organization for coordinating transportation capital projects.
These types of infrastructure projects — think bridge replacement, or adding lanes to highways (e.g., when we made McGalliard from Morrison Road out to I-69 four lanes), or converting an abandoned railroad to a recreational trail) — are so costly only the feds, using borrowed money of course, can afford to pay for them.
Or pay mostly for them: the projects are usually 80 percent federally funded, so some local funding has to pick up the rest.
Creating and operating an MPO is so the projects are long-term, theoretically well thought-out, and coordinated by priorities local officials jointly come up with since the amount of federal money is limited.
Our MPO is the Delaware-Muncie Metropolitan Plan Commission, which we've also had for years, and the MPO has two committees through which all planning is conducted, including the formation of ongoing three-year Transportation Improvement Programs and annual reports to accompany them.
We're in the midst of the fiscal 2014-17 TIP, a thick document that lists all projects underway in various stages of engineering, right-of-way acquisition, construction, or post-construction inspection.
One committee is the Technical Advisory Committee, a 23-member group including representatives of all major utilities, Muncie's and the county's engineering offices, Ball State's director of engineering, multiple members of the plan commission planning staff, among others.
The other is an Administrative Committee, much smaller at eight members, including a representative of the Muncie mayor, a county commissioner, plan commission member, the MITS manager, Ball State's associate vice president for facilities planning and management, and a representative of Indiana's Department of Transportation, though which federal funding flows.
Both meet monthly — except often meetings are canceled for lack of new business — to amend the plan as conditions change. Meetings are open to the public, but I'm about the only outsider who tries to attend.
As a matter of fact, the MPO has a 2,312-word plan for trying to assure public involvement in the TIP process and the TIP's subsequent implementation. The public participation plan is to be evaluated annually to determine effectiveness, but I've never seen such an evaluation.
All together, the MPO has more than $60 million in commitments for the current fiscal year, which we're halfway through (we use the state's fiscal year, which ends June 30).
Even at 80 percent federal funding, that's $12 million needed from local sources, though about half of this local match is for projects paid for with state money.
Last month's meeting of the Administrative Committee saw major change, and, in fact, December was the last time that committee will ever meet, to be replaced by a new Transportation Policy Committee.
Membership will be upped to nine voting members, a majority of whom will be elected officials or their representatives, who will serve for the duration of their term of office.
The Muncie mayor and a county commissioner will remain on, and a Muncie City Council member and Delaware County Council member will join them along with a Yorktown Town Board member.
A desire for elected officials to constitute the majority on the policy-setting committee is what drove the changes, which included new bylaws.
The TPC's remaining four voting members will be MITS general manager, a Ball State representative (for some projects, the university provides the matching local money), INDOT's district director, and the executive director of the plan commission.
The Technical Advisory Committee remains, but will be pared down to 15 people, all appointed by the Transportation Policy Committee. TAC will also have representatives of Parker City (out of county, but inside the urban area), Albany, Gaston, Selma and Eaton.
The inaugural January meeting of the new TPC was set for today — but it got canceled for lack of business.


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On this day in 2000, former President George W. Bush nominated Gen. Colin Powell as his Secretary of State.
Clay Cane
FILE - In this Dec. 16. 2000 file photo, President-elect Bush smiles as he introduces retired Gen. Colin Powell, left, as his nominee to be secretary of state during a ceremony in Crawford, Texas. Powell, former Joint Chiefs chairman and secretary of state, has died from COVID-19 complications. In an announcement on social media Monday, the family said Powell had been fully vaccinated. He was 84. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
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We are finally crossing off the master bedroom on our to do list. We do still need some art work but we anticipate to collect those things over time. It took a little while to be inspired and really tune into what we envisioned for our master bedroom. We purchased a king size bed and memory foam bed. We purchased all new linens, one large dresser, two side tables, a floor length mirror and painted the walls, ceiling and did a stencil treatment behind the bed. I feel so relaxed and calm every night and morning when I enter our bedroom.


text:
Elisabeth Castonier (née le  - morte le ) est une écrivaine allemande.

Biographie

Castonier est la fille du peintre Felix Borchardt. Elle passe son enfance à Dresde jusqu'à ce que sa famille déménage à Paris.

En 1912, elle déménage à Berlin. En 1923, elle épouse le chanteur Paul Castonier, avec qui elle divorcera plus tard.

Castonier écrit des satires pour l'hebdomadaire Die Ente. Elle s'exile à Vienne (Autriche) lors de l'arrivée des Nazis au pouvoir. Après l'Anschluss en 1938, elle déménage à nouveau, d'abord en Italie, puis au Danemark et, enfin, à Londres. Elle y écrit de la littérature d'enfance et de jeunesse et est également correspondante pour News Chronicle, New Statesman, Pariser Tageszeitung et Wiener Tagblatt.

Œuvre
  Frau, Knecht, Magd, 1932
  Eternal Front, Londres, James Clarke and Co. 1942
  Stürmisch bis heiter. Memoiren einer Außenseiterin, 1964

Notes et références

Liens externes

Journaliste allemande
Journaliste allemand du XXe siècle
Écrivain allemand du XXe siècle
Femme de lettres allemande
Naissance en mars 1894
Naissance à Dresde
Naissance dans le royaume de Saxe
Décès en septembre 1975
Décès à Munich
Décès à 81 ans

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


With the change of governments in Brazil, US law firms are optimistic about their business in Latin America's largest economy. Michel Temer became Brazil's acting president May 12 after the country's Senate voted to suspend President Dilma Rousseff over budget violations. Her suspension is for 180 days, although experts believe she will be impeached and removed during that time, thus leaving Temer as president until Rousseff's mandate ends in January 2019.
"The business community's reaction to the 'change' in government has been dramatic, going from a state of deep pessimism to a wave of relief and enthusiasm about the future," says Paul Schnell, Chair of the Latin America practice at Skadden.


The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) community held the first ever "Gay in the Garden" Rainbow Prom last Friday evening at the Monora Pavilion.
The event was organized under the auspices of Dufferin Child and Family Services, by the members of their group for lesbian and gay youth and the group leader Kersty Franklin.
The event was well attended and participants enjoyed a sit down dinner before dancing the night away to the tunes of a local DJ.
For those with two left feet, there were two raffles, a scratch art competition, a non-permanent tattoo artist and a photo booth to keep the evening entertaining, while a non-alcoholic bar dispensed the evening's no charge libations!
Attendees came from as far away as Everett and Caledon as well was from all over Mono, Orangeville and surrounding communities.
During the course of the evening, I had numerous conversations with various attendees about the event, their motivations for coming and also the group itself, which has been going on for 17 years and caters to individuals between 14 and 21 years of age and from every corner of the LGBTQ spectrum.
Most who I talked to said they felt the group was highly supportive and represented a family that they could not only relate to, but feel comfortable in.
As for their motivations for attending the prom, they varied, but primarily centred on it being a chance for them to attend a prom, where they were accepted as themselves and not be on the outside looking in, as well as showing support for others in their community.
They talked about feeling segregated in schools, openly ridiculed, marginalized and even becoming the objects of violent aggression because of their sexual orientation.
A common thread, best expressed by Eli Blacklock, the charismatic head of the organizing committee, was the frustration felt over constantly being looked upon as someone who was broken and in need of fixing.
She became a part of the Rainbow Prom, because "I'm gay as hell" and she wanted to be with others who, like her, were proud of who they were and wanted to enjoy an evening at an event often denied them in straight society.
When asked when they realized that they were gay, the answers ranged from as early as twelve to mid-high school years. The whole range of LGBTQ individuals was represented at prom, from the openly gay, like Eli and fellow committee member Hunter Milligan, to Eli's sister Lindsay, who admitted to being straight, but bi-curious.
Through the generous support of the Astor Family Foundation, Dufferin Child and Family Services, the Stream B&B, Theatre Orangeville, Broadway Music and photographer Jim Waddington, the first annual Rainbow Prom was certainly a rousing success and a welcome respite from the day-to-day societal and community attitudes and frequently negative, perceptions for Dufferin's lesbian and gay community.
All in attendance were generous with their praise of the event and its organizers and in particular the group organizer, Kersty Franklin.
The event is sure to be repeated next year and for many years after if this year's reception was indicative of the support from the community at large and the LGBTQ community in Dufferin Caledon, in particular.


The Immokalee Foundation's Career Development program recently received a $7,500 boost from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation.
The grant represents one of Bank of America's Economic Mobility Workforce Development and Education partnerships.
Whether Immokalee students consider attending a technical school or college, joining the military or going directly into the workforce, the foundation's Career Development program provides full knowledge of the available choices in those career paths. The program helps young students to realistically plan their futures – and succeed. Workshops teach the application process for college, technical schools and scholarships, and provide advanced training and education.
Financial support for the Career Development program is used for workshops, career panels, college tours, and programs that provide productive activities for the students, such as leadership training.
One hundred percent of the students who participate in The Immokalee Foundation's Career Development program graduate from high school, and 100 percent of those students pursue a college or vocational post-secondary education. Of those who pursue higher education, 75 percent graduate from their respective programs.


Effect of new hybrids based on 5,16-pregnadiene scaffold linked to an anti-inflammatory drug on the growth of a human astrocytoma cell line (U373).
Synthesis and activity of novel 16-dehydropregnenolone acetate derivatives as inhibitors of type 1 5α-reductase and on cancer cell line SK-LU-1.
Novel 17 substituted pregnadiene derivatives as 5 alpha-reductase inhibitors and their binding affinity for the androgen receptor.
New progesterone esters as 5alpha-reductase inhibitors.
Relative binding affinity of novel steroids to androgen receptors in hamster prostate.


No entries were received for the September part of the Photography competition so I decided instead that a "best of the rest" selection from the photos submitted in the other months would be the winners for September. These photos will also qualify for the final, alongside the winners from June, July and August. This selection was made by me, using the voting from the previous months as one input.
In making my choices I looked for photos which do more than highlight how beautiful our golf courses are. A golf course is created for a purpose, that purpose is for the game of golf to be played on it and I tried to select photos which showed that in action. Below we can see the moments of consideration before a diffcult hole is played, our club champion beginning his final round on the way to a great victory, a challenge tour player dealing with a mid-hole mini-crisis and the moment when a hole has been successfully completed. Every round is made up of hundreds of these moments and the beauty of this game can be found there.


Day four of YPO Innovation Week was in high gear from in-person events in California to a virtual event beamed into listener's offices and homes from China.
Auto Tech Summit's second day revved things up with a robust look at the ways in which cars and other forms of transportation are becoming extensions of the connected world.
There were extraordinary resources throughout the day, including co-founder, director and chief strategist for Optimus Ride Inc., Ramiro Almeida whose focus on simplifying solutions to address complex challenges resulted in developing the first fully autonomous (Level 4) electric vehicle fleet.
For those interested in launching and exiting in the automotive space, a presentation by David Ploucha illuminated some best practices, while the future of the shared ride world was shared by Jose Ignacio Puente, CEO of car subscription software and services platform company Flexdrive.
CFO of Via, Clara Fain, offered a revolutionary look at the ways in which public transit has gravitated from a regulated system of rigid routes and schedules to a fully dynamic, on-demand system and the day concluded with a presentation by the dynamic stunt driver, vintage car collector and overseer of Hagerty's videos, website, magazine and podcasts, Larry Webster.
YPO Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Hospitality, Technology, Travel and Digital Marketing and Media networks came together to produce a global conference call about hotel and travel technologies. Starring Mitch Presnick — YPO member, investor, entrepreneur and founder of ROOM and Super 8 Hotels (China) Co., Ltd. — the conversation walked listeners through why his hotels were focusing their disruptions based predominantly on millennial desires.
Presnick does this by turning each of his 11,000 hotels into personalized habitats, run almost exclusively on an app. If you thought using your phones as a key card was futuristic, consider that 'users' (what Presnick calls people who visit his hotels in lieu of 'guests') walk into rooms set to their preferred temperature when they enter, are given the specific mattress firmness they've requested and enjoy smart mirrors and showers that remember their settings. All this has rendered the front desk irrelevant now that information is all stored on an app.
On the operator side of things, changes in staff will create a "hallowing of the middle," while three IoT elements — communication, energy and transportation — will help optimize the way buildings are run.


Xiomara Bermudez plans to spend less or about the same on Christmas presents compared to last year even though her husband, an air conditioner mechanic, is expecting a wage increase soon.
"Even if the raise is coming, it's going to the second kid, to diapers," says the 29-year-old stay-at-home mother of a toddler and infant. "I always buy for the kids. If I had a lot of money, I would buy for the adults too."
She plans to bake cookies in the couple's Queens, New York apartment and distribute them as gifts to friends.
Bermudez isn't the only holiday gift-giver who's planning to improvise with cheaper options this season. Much to the disappointment of retailers, there is evidence that tepid wage growth in the slowly recovering economy will result in softer-than-expected holiday spending this year. Although unemployment has fallen to 5.8 percent in the strongest U.S. hiring streak since 2006, some 7 million Americans are working part-time when they'd like a full-time job, and the number who've given up looking for jobs—and therefore not counted as unemployed—is at a level not seen since the 1970s.
Angela Riemenschneider, a 39-year-old single mother who lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, says she will spend less on gifts this year, too. She says she'll probably Minecraft Legos and some video games for her nine-year-old son, but as an office manager for a dentist's office, she's been busier with work compared with last year. Riemenschneider has worked at the office for 2.5 years and hasn't received a raise. "We used to get bonuses quite regularly but those have lessened," she says.
In recent weeks, many retailers have adopted a more cautious tone than industry researchers and economists about the holiday season.
Even so, the world's largest brick-and-mortar retailer, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., told investors Thursday it expects the holiday season to be "highly competitive" even as the company is resorting to deep price cuts to attract consumers. Wal-Mart has cut prices on 20,000 items and is offering free shipping on its top 100 items.
The company said Thursday that it will also price-match Amazon.com and other online retailers over the holiday season, a move that "shows the level of desperation it's resorted to in an effort to stop its customers shopping elsewhere," says Joshua Raymond, a senior market analyst at the U.K.-based broker City Index.
Sales across the retail industry have been weak this fall, and the fierce price-cutting is eroding companies' margins. Gap Inc. reported a drop in sales in October, and this week Macy's and Kohl's each reported disappointing sales in their latest quarters and lowered their full-year earnings guidance. Ann Taylor LOFT owner Ann Inc. recently warned investors it also wouldn't meet sales expectations in the latest quarter, and J.C. Penney disappointed investors Wednesday with flat same-store sales in the third quarter versus an expected 3 percent rise.
Retail analysts and economists insist that Americans will spend more on holiday shopping this year than each of the past two years, but last year's seasonal sales were hit by economic uncertainty surrounding the federal government shutdown, making a year-on-year comparison favor 2014. Global business advisory firm FTI Consulting said recently that it expects a 3.5 percent increase this November-to-December period from last year. Industry group National Retail Federation is even more optimistic, forecasting 4.1 percent sales growth, which would be the first time in three years above 4 percent.
Federal data showed consumer spending dipped in September after a robust August. Retail sales in September fell 0.2 percent, excluding autos and despite sales of more than 10 million iPhone 6 models. Data for October retail sales will be released Friday.
"There have been small finds of a slowdown in spending growth over the past few months, but I'm not too worried about them," says Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist for Capital Economics.
He gives three reasons: wage growth is starting to pick up, gasoline prices are at four-year lows nationally, and debt levels are lower than they were three to four years ago while credit conditions remain good.
"Because people use about the same about of gas each month, they're paying less and have more to spend on other items," Dales says. "It's a kind of year when people are in the mood to spend on other items."
Third-quarter consumer spending growth came in at a 1.8 percent rate, weaker than the second quarter's 2.5 percent reading. So while economists forecast higher growth in the fourth quarter, it may not be much to boast about.
"Sometimes we don't even exchange gifts," says Clay Gordon, a single 25-year-old working for a political advocacy group in Washington, D.C. He says he'll probably spend less on gifts this year even though he got his first salaried job in January.
Pat Lorimer, a personal assistant to the owner of Ridgmar Oil & Gas in Fort Worth, Texas, also plans to spend the same amount on Christmas gifts from last year.
"I have the same people that I always shop for," Lorimer, 62 and mother to three adults, says. "I made my list. There's nothing different."


These picture writing prompts with sequencing cards are great for young writers who need more support in early writing. Your students get an opportunity to use their visual discrimination skills to help them pay attention to details in pictures. They may choose to order the cards first (ORDER TO WRITE) or another option is to complete the writing sheets then order the cards (WRITE TO ORDER). Ultimately they will be writing sentences about the pictures given. They also get to color their pictures and sequence the sheets to create their own little book as a keepsake. Simply print the page/s and review the directions with them. Encourage them to write one or two sentences that describe the picture on any given sheet. I also included a blank writing sheet for extended writing should it be necessary. The sheets are great for homework or small group work in which case they can each be given a different page to prepare a group book instead.The picture cards can be laminated and sequenced first and the sheets can be ordered accordingly to match them. I included little circles on the cards where students can write the number in the sequence with dry erase markers. Individually, your students can work on one writing scenario at a time.


text:
HomeTee ShotsThe Day Finally Arrives
The Day Finally Arrives
May 24, 2010 Scott MacLeod Tee Shots
Jason Day Earns 1st PGA Tour Win At HP Byron Nelson Championship
-Jason Day Wins The HP Byron Nelson Championship-
Early success and high expectations can be a terrible recipe for a burgeoning golf career but things turned in the right direction on Sunday for Jason Day as he captured his first PGA Tour title at the HP Byron Nelson Championship.
Achieving that at age 22 is incredible by most standards, and follows a recent streak of 20-somethings taking down PGA Tour titles (Rory McIlroy -Quail Hollow Championship and Adam Scott – Valero Texas Open), but when you are five years past being heralded as the next great thing in professional golf, it does gives some pause for extra thought.
As the youngest Nationwide Tour winner on record at the age of nineteen Jason Day was expected to join his fellow Aussies on the big tour and instantly start racking up crowns. But alas, the PGA Tour does not yield so easily. It took him 65 tries to get the first win and nobody really appreciates what went in to making that happen than Day himself. It has turned out be me a far more wandering journey than he, or anyone, else, expected.
That included a mind-numbing final hole Sunday where Day (66-65-67-72-270) won an "uglyfest" battle to scrape out a bogey and secure a two-stroke win. Blake Adams, playing alongside, made his own water-strewn tragedy on 18 at the Four Seasons Las Colinas that prevented him from catching Day. It did however; give Adams part of a 3-way tie for second with Brian Gay and Jeff Overton, at 8 under par -272.
No matter the quality of the finish Day got what he came for, a win, and he was very humbled to finally become not only a PGA Tour winner, but the victor of the HP Byron Nelson Championship. "It means the world to me, for this to be my first TOUR event. To be even in the same breath as Mr. Nelson is just amazing and just to have my name on the Champions' Wall for next year, it's a complete honor. I'm so happy that I came through with that win, and I'm happy that my first one was here at the HP Byron Nelson."
To his credit Day did not shy away from the truth about why he had not lived up to his early billing – the promise by many that he was the "next Tiger Woods."
He did not lean on the fact that he had some injuries early in his career as an excuse. "No, me being lazy and thinking — you give someone a really good contract deal with, you know, a big company, you have — you know, everyone is telling you you're the best, and it's easy to slack off," he said with modesty in the media room afterwards. "It's so easy to slack off, and I never grew up with anything. I was very poor growing up, and to have a couple of dollars under my belt kinda eased the tension, and with that I didn't work hard. I've been working very hard this year and last year, and it's starting to pay off, which is nice."
That's a great lesson for another golfer who actually garnered more attention this week than all the pros, 16 year-old Jordan Spieth. Not only did the youngster tee it up – he truly competed for the title, finishing in a creditable tie for 16th place tie.
Asked to comment of what advice he would have for the young man, based on his own wild ride, Jason Day had this to say. "The advice I would give him is keep at it, keep learning, keep playing a lot of tournaments and try and win as many as you can and make it a habit, make it a habit and keep pushing through, no matter what happens. As long as you push through those hard experiences and work hard, you'll come out on top. It will all work itself out."
The PGA Tour is a tough racket, and true greatness is really only measured one way – with wins, not simply by the stroke of a friendly pen, happy to gloss and promote for the sake of monetary gain.
Jason Day finally has his first win and in time, so too Jordan Spieth might as well.
But they don't hand those trophies and million dollar checks out simply because they like you – soggy bogeys or otherwise – for four days you need to be better than everyone else.
Sunday, Jason Day did just that, and all those expectations are finally starting to look a little more creditable.
Of course he knows now, if he wants to have the feeling he enjoyed Sunday again – he'll have to work hard because there is a whole slew of Jordan Spieths, or the next "Jason Day," out there that only too happy to steal the spotlight.
This report also provided to GolfWRX.com by Flagstick Golf Magazine (www.flagstick.com)